Cowan’s work takes inspiration from botanical illustrations and exquisite landscapes. Romantic scenes of ecstatic naturalism interrupted by flat planes of color and radiating lines echoing symmetry of place combine to suggest otherworldly voids and apparitions. Referencing artists like Hilma af Klint and Emma Kunz, the geometric layers in Cowan’s work suggest a potential for spirituality and healing that resonates across each field of vision. Citing Breugel and Bosch, Cowan’s work additionally hints at the base or perverse nature of blocking out or editing concentrated sections of a highly rendered image. What happens when an illusion is broken or altered? Where do our eyes move and how do we make sense of these new forms, which either replace or conceal segments of the original image? We are left with a sense of pleasure in discovery and encouraged exploration.
Cowan’s sensitive brushwork and attention to detail in texture draw us in further as they contribute to objects as rich in surface variation as in composition and imagery. Shaped canvases expand the fullness of these sensory experiences.
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Radiant Void will open Friday, December 3rd, 2021 at Elizabeth Moore Fine Art (Hudson NY) and December 10th, 2021 at Good Naked (Brooklyn NY). Both exhibitions will be on view through January 16th, 2022.
For more information (including exact locations) and images, please contact info@elizabethmoorefineart.com
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Jon Cowan (b. 1982 Temple, Texas) attended The University of Texas at San Antonio where they earned a BFA in 2006. Cowan’s recent exhibitions include Simuvac Projects, Brooklyn, NY; Gray Contemporary, Houston, TX; Ortega y Gasset Projects, Brooklyn, NY; the Parlour Bushwick, Brooklyn NY; c2c projects, San Francisco, CA; Ventana 244, Brooklyn, NY; Good Naked, Brooklyn, NY; and TSA New York, Brooklyn NY. Cowan lives and works in Brookline, MA.
